


Find a Way

by drugdog



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Friends With Benefits, Homophobic Language, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4088137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drugdog/pseuds/drugdog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We queers always find a way, Gonorrhea. You sure as hell get around to chasin’ skirts, even if you have to pay them to not get a handprint on your pretty face.” Bill snorts. Joe’s a little smartass, but he’s right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find a Way

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like joe and bill would act fake gay around each other so much that it would eventually stop being fake and they wouldn't really give a shit.

“This is all just some bullshit.” Normandy’s dark and cold and Joe’s leaning out some from the cover of their foxhole to squint through the trees, watching the line. Bill is half asleep. His hands itch for a cigarette, but the risk of Krauts seeing or his flame going out in the damp dirt makes him scrape under his nails instead.

“What do you mean?” he asks. He likes it when Joe rants- the guy’s sharper than he thinks. Bill exhales like he’s smoking and leans forward to squint, too, pushing down his helmet, imagining a cowboy in the Westerns his ma read to him when he was young.

“This war, you know. What’re we fighting for? Justice. That’s what they tell us in war bond commercials and shit. But really, Hitler didn’t wanna listen when he got told no and everyone else was too much of a coward to just… put their foot down. I don’t know.” Joe reclines against the foxhole’s dirt again. No one’s dropped by, whispering “flash,” in a while, so Bill feels Joe’s anxiety fading away. Maybe it’s the nip of wine they stole when they marched through an empty town.

Bill picks his nailbed too hard and swears under his breath. “I guess. I don’t think Hitler would’ve stopped even if we promised to kick his ass, and that’s what we did, you know. The limeys, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Joe says, and scratches a hand through his curly hair. “Do you think it’s worth it, though?”

He rolls it over in his mind a few times before he responds. He doesn’t really like where the discussion’s going. His ma always taught him to be proud of his country. “Everyone says it is ‘til they actually gotta go to war.” He mumbles it as if the censorship guy’s going to come and clap a hand over his mouth. “They’ll draft people either way.”

“But what do you think? Not what everyone else’s sayin’.” Joe shifts closer to him. His brass knuckles glint under dim, cold moonlight, and his grime-caked hands are mottled shadows.

“No,” he says, and sighs. “Maybe it’s ‘cause I wanna go home.”

Joe’s laugh is hollow and low. “They’re callin’ us heroes, you know. For fuck’s sake. They think we’re heroes because we know how to put a bullet in someone’s brain and help some palooka put his guts back in without us cryin’. I don’t wanna go home to that shit.”

“Shut up, Joe,” Bill says. “If they buy us drinks, they can call us cocksuckers for all I care.”

“True for some of us, you know.” Bill elbows him hard at that. “You know what I heard?” He gives Joe silence as an answer, because he knows Joe will tell him even if he says no. “I heard that little college boy- Weaver, or whatever the fuck- does it.”

“Guess he really can’t close his mouth.” He grins and Joe snickers. “What, are you on your knees right by him half the time?” Joe elbows him this time.

“Like you’ve been complaining when I'm on my knees in front of you, you stuck-up prick.” Joe slides his brass knuckles off his hand and stretches his fingers out. There’s blood crusted on the skin. Bill wonders whose it is.

The crackle of gunfire sounds in the distance and they both jump. Less than a month in combat and half the boys are getting shellshocked. “It’s been a while. I’d say you try again, just to see if I will.” He knows Joe will. It’s a constant game of one-upping between them. “And I’m havin’ a tough time tryin’ to stay awake and watch this piece of shit line.”

Joe’s smiling and reaching low when something snaps close to them. Bill slaps his hand away and points in the direction. “Listen, you queer fuck,” he whispers.

A cricket clicks. “Flash,” Bill says, just loud enough to be heard.

“Thunder,” comes the response. “Y’all’re off.” Bill can’t place the voice, but it's familiar. He shares a glance with Joe and crawls out from the foxhole. He ignores the sharp iron smell of blood mixed with dirt when he does.

It’s Babe and Malark. He smiles and gives a mock salute. “Where the fuck are we supposed to sleep, then, sirs?” he asks, staying prone.

“You’d be wrong if you think I give a fuck, Gonorrhea. Get the hell outta here before I start actin’ like Speirs.” Babe’s teeth are white when he smiles. Malark gives a thumbs-up from behind Babe.

“Good,” Joe says, coming out beside Bill. His brass knuckles are back on his hand. “My legs were gettin’ cramped. Have fun.”

They switch out and start walking back to base. He wishes he could take off his boots- the dirt is cool and soft and it’d remind him of running wild in his old Philly neighborhood. “I think this’d be a good time,” Bill says. His rifle smacks on his leg with every step. “If you don’t mind gettin’ your uniform dirty.”

“I just fuckin’ said my legs’re cramped. I’m startin’ to think you’re the queerer one of the two of us,” Joe says.

Bill shrugs. “You can tell me that when I start with you, buddy.” Joe nudges him with his shoulder. “Far as I’m concerned, I’m still gonna go back to the States, and I’ll fuck a Jane, not a Joe.”

There’s silence after that. Joe drops into an empty foxhole and Bill settles in with him. It smells less like blood here, more like the richness of earth, and the crack of gunfire’s turned into the rumble of a faraway storm. “I’ll be the first back to the States, I’m tellin’ you,” he says.

Now that they’re further from the line, he doesn’t worry about Krauts when he reaches into Joe’s pocket for his lighter and starts burning a cigarette. Joe kisses him before Bill can get it into his mouth, and he bites hard on Joe’s lip until he pulls back. When he does, Joe’s got his cigarette and is taking a slow inhale.

Bill narrows his eyes. “You know, if this all-bullshit war didn’t happen, Joe, you wouldn’t get to be as much of a fuckin’ cocksucker as you are.” Joe hands the cigarette back and shakes his head.

“We queers always find a way, Gonorrhea. You sure as hell get around to chasin’ skirts, even if you have to pay them to not get a handprint on your pretty face.” Bill snorts. Joe’s a little smartass, but he’s right.

The conversation’s dying. Bill’s more tired than he thought, so he’s half-tempted to let it. “You remember how we met?” Joe slings an arm around his shoulders and sets the back of his head on the dirt wall. His eyes drift closed, a smile pulls the corner of his mouth.

“You spent three months at Toccoa wantin’ to talk to me and finally fuckin’ asked why my voice is so rough.”

“Why it sounds like you swallowed half a fuckin' gravel road,” he corrects. He’s pleased when Joe can’t hold back his crescent of a smile anymore.

It wipes off pretty fast, though. “And I knew you weren’t the type to give a fuck. You remember what I said?”

“Got it from suckin’ cock,” Bill says, trying to drop his voice, scrape it out, so he sounds like Joe. “Hell, I didn’t believe you. Toughest guy in the company’s a goddamn fairy, I was thinkin’, like hell he is. Who’d’ve thought you’d be doin’ it to me a few weeks later?”

Bill leans against Joe a little more and closes his eyes. He stubs out the remains of his cigarette.

“Queers always find a way,” Joe says. Bill listens to Joe’s even breathing until his empty mind leads him away from dirt and blood and foxholes.


End file.
